KIEV (AP)--President Viktor Yushchenko appealed to lawmakers
Thursday to support legislation declaring the Soviet-era famine that
killed up to 10 million people in Ukraine as genocide, a move Russia
has strongly opposed.

Moscow has argued the 1932-33 famine was part of Communist
repression that also targeted other ethnic groups in the former Soviet
Union, and it is wrong to single out the Ukrainian people and call it a
genocide against them.

The Great Famine, as the event is known by Ukrainians, was started
by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin when he ordered the government to seize
crops as part of a campaign to force Ukrainian peasants to join
collective farms.

"We aren't accusing any people, any country or anyone in Ukraine of
genocide," Yushchenko said in his letter to the 450-member parliament.
"That is not the aim of this bill. The author of this evil act was
Stalin's regime."

No vote has been scheduled on the bill currently before parliament.

The issue remains highly charged in the former Soviet republic
because calling it genocide would amount to an indictment of Soviet
policies - something some Communists and many pro-Russian politicians
are loath to do. Russia, as the successor state of the Soviet Union,
has also been reluctant to look too deeply into Communist-era crimes.

Ten countries have already recognized the famine as genocide,
including the U.S., Canada and Austria.

Yushchenko noted all three presidents since Ukraine's 1991
independence from the Soviet Union have supported the effort, and he
said opinion polls show most Ukrainians support such a pronouncement.

"Ukrainians have to find in themselves the courage to recognize this
and convince others that our nation became the victim of a horrible
evil - the evil of genocide that can never be allowed to happen again,"
Yushchenko said.